Saturday, December 23, 2006
Space
Who is Guy Smiley.
Saturday, December 02, 2006
Toothbrush
I've used electric brushes in the past but I haven't for a long time now. Electric toothbrush I understand. Electric toothbrush with on-board computer? Now that's just plain unnecessary.
Manual toothbrushes have come a long way. They aren't just flat bristles in the shape of a rectangle anymore. I like the Active Angle, the Navigator, and the Wave Colgate brushes. I like the Oral-B CrossAction brush a lot too. Sometimes I have trouble finding them at the store because I always need the compact head with soft bristles style. If I don't use the compact head size I find that there isn't enough room to maneuver. I don't know why all the other sizes are so much more common. I'd guess that everyone else besides me must have smaller teeth or bigger mouths. I think I have bigger teeth. I have all of them that are in the diagram below except for a bicuspid from each quadrant. I had the 4 of them pulled when I was 12 and right before I got my braces.
Saturday, November 18, 2006
Saturday Morning Cartunes with Dietrich
I'll have to go to a radio station event sometime to find out what everybody looks like. I think they have a chili cookoff or something every year. I'm not sure when that is. I think Dietrich said this morning that he might check out the Primus show tonight at the Rave. Maybe I'll go to that and see if I'm able to find a guy that looks like Lieut. Dan but with legs.
Monday, November 06, 2006
Turns out Doogie Howser is gay
Sunday, November 05, 2006
Friday, November 03, 2006
Jon Carry Banner
My opinion is this. I don't think he intentionally set out to insult our armed forces in Iraq. The words that he said probably didn't come out as planned but I think reflect his true beliefs about A. the intelligence level of a person who chooses to serve in the military in the absence of a draft and B. the reasons they choose to serve in the military. I'm not buying that it was a botched joke. What was the joke supposed to be again? Then he at first refuses to apologize but then laters caves into the pressure and does so. That's revealing in and of itself.
The Soldiers Behind the Banner from the blog of Charlie Sykes
Thursday, November 02, 2006
I killed rabbits
That same summer was the time when we got a visit from a policeman at our house. Our back yard has a wood fence around it and bushes but apparently a passerby saw us with the pellet gun and called the police on us. I think we stepped outside the fence to see if a rabbit ran that way when they saw I had it. We found out it's against the law to fire a weapon of any kind within our village. I guess that makes sense but whatever. Who gives a rip about hunting rabbits with a pellet gun? It's not like it was a .22 or something. We checked with all our neighbors and they didn't care. They wanted the rabbits gone as much as we did. They were a real problem that year.
Saturday, October 21, 2006
Pumpkins
Google Satellite Image
Rest Stop
Monday, October 16, 2006
Final 2006 Miles
Sunday, October 15, 2006
Slo-mo Home Depot
This is another great gag I ran into a few weeks ago. Improv Anywhere got about 225 people to shop at Home Depot in Manhattan in slow motion for 5 minutes. Then after a 5 minute break freeze in place completely for 5 minutes. See the entire explanation and videos of it all here.
155 t-shirts at once
I love when people do crazy stuff like this. I saw a different guy a few weeks back with 121 shirts at one time. What's next?
Line Rider
I ran into this line rider thing a week or so ago. I'm not very good at it so far. There was also a link to this example which probably took an pretty good amount of time to create. I think I know what I'm doing during my lunch hours this week.
Smith
Don't shop at Undergroundtown.com
I've only been ripped off on by sellers on eBay twice over the last 6 years or so. I've purchased nearly 100 things from almost as many sellers and now it's a pretty safe bet I'm never going to see the Prometheus CD I bought from this guy. I bought it in June for $17.95 with the shipping. I hoped it would come before I left town on vacation but it didn't. I was surprised not to see it in my pile of mail when I got back in July. I emailed the guy and got one response back after my third email. He apologized, claimed things had gotten crazy and that he had, had a lot of spam but said he'd send it out right away. It never came. Things got busy and before I knew it the time passed where I could get my money back through Paypal. I emailed a few more times with no reply. I used the dispute console on eBay to report a non-delivery on a seller at around the 60 day mark. He got back to me on that and apologized again and said he'd send it along with an extra CD for my trouble. Nothing ever came. A couple messages later via this dispute console thing he admitted he didn't even have one to send but would get one in and send it. A dispute only stays open for 90 days after you initiate it and now we're past that and it closed. I've emailed a couple times but it's safe to say I'm never going to hear anything or get my CD. I posted negative feedback a long time ago. It was his first negative feedback ever. I even bought a CD from him before all this and things went fine. I see that recently he's gotten a whole bunch more negative feedback ratings....12 in the last month from others who were also ripped off and angry. Today I emailed him and told him he was going to hell when he dies if he doesn't send me my CD or find Jesus. I hope he does both although the latter is far more important.
Sunday, September 17, 2006
Don't shop at Bike n Ski
Maywood 2005
Maywood 2006
The first year I did this ride (2004) I did the 25 mile route and it felt like I finished before I was even started. Last year I did the 50 mile route and it was more challenging than I anticipated. As it turned out the route wasn't just more of the same but instead it included a stretch of road that goes up and down and over some steep hills like a roller coaster. The loop back was on different roads but the hills were similar. Because I had no idea it would be like that, my pacing was all messed up and so I was pretty well tapped out by the 35 mile mark. It didn't help either that I had skipped the first rest area and the chance to eat something there or that I had, had the flu earlier in that week.
This year I chose the 25 mile route when I registered. I later thought that maybe I would finish the 25 miles and then start from the beginning again and take the shortest route, the 12 mile route. Then Friday night before the ride I decided it would be better to take the 50 mile route and cut if off and back over to the 25 mile route which would give me at least something more than 25 but yet still be less than 50 which I didn't think I wanted to do. I even had it all planned out where I was going to cut over. Yesterday around the time I got to the first rest stop I had pretty much decided to scrap that idea and just do the entire 50 mile route. It was a challenge I just couldn't pass up.
This years ride went entirely different from last years. The route was pretty much the same but since I was familiar with it I paced myself better and finished strong. I was worn down by the end but I never felt completely tapped out the whole time. I felt like a million bucks at the end. I think next year I'll either take it at a quicker pace or do the 65 mile route. That's 364 days away and counting.
Saturday, September 16, 2006
George Bush is not a monster
Sunday, September 10, 2006
What's this?
Dick Cheney
Thursday, September 07, 2006
Tuxedo Cat
In this other photo you can see Socks near my Spri Xercise ball. I've thought about training him to walk on top of it like the monkeys at the circus do. I think if any animal would be good at walking around on top of a rolling ball it would be a cat. Cats are supposed to have great balancing abilities. They're brains are probably about walnut sized or something but relative to other mammals a lot more of their brain mass is cerebellum so their balance and motor skills are real good. I think if I can pull this off it'll be great entertainment for any guests I have over. Although even if I manage to get him comfortable doing this, he's pretty shy when people come over so it'll really be a miracle if I can get him to do it then.
Tuesday, August 29, 2006
Some random, mostly irrelevant things
Someone pulled out in front of me on the way home from work today. I used my horn. I somehow managed to make an exceptionally cool sounding stuttering beep with it. This minivan already had some sizeable dents in the side so the dude who drives it has evidently already been in an accident with it. There was no accident today but if there had been one, I'm in good hands with Allstate. President Palmer would forgive me because Allstate has accident forgiveness.
I've switched now to eating Planters Peanuts. I don't think peanuts are a vegetable but I'm not positive. I'm not sure what they are except that they are good. I get the kind that come in a glass jar and don't have the shells on them anymore. I don't like to have to work through a shell first to get at my peanuts.
For some strange reason I've encountered the number 666 several times recently. At work I quoted a customer a part we sell and we had exactly 666 in stock. I happened to glance down at my odometer as I left work one day and I had 36,666 miles on my truck. There's been 1 or 2 other times something with that number came up besides these 2 instances but I can't remember exactly what they were. I think one of them was a file size on my computer or something or maybe something on my receipt from the grocery store. I'm not particularly freaked out by this or anything but it does seem unusual.
I own a black cat and he crosses my path every day. I'm not superstitious about that. He's mostly black anyway. My cat likes to be combed. I can't figure out what kind of music he likes. I have about 50 samples of bird sounds on my computer and that's usually something he finds very interesting.
I'm eating carrots now. They are the baby-cut kind. These are much more convenient than buying regular long carrots and stripping the outsides off of them before I can eat them. Carrots like these are probably 90% of my vegetable intake. I think I'm going to eat some cantaloupe next.
It's getting dark outside now much earlier than I'm happy with. Tonight I came home and crammed down a turkey sandwich as soon as I walked in the door just so I could get out early enough on my bike before it got dark. As it was I just barely got an hour of riding in. It was pretty dark near the end too. Now I'm eating all this food because my dinner was only that sandwich. I didn't want to eat very big before I went out riding. I managed to get 15.5 miles into 57 minutes.
I'm going to be getting a new computer at work soon. It's about time. My computer I have now is from 2000 I think. At least I upgraded myself with Windows XP some time ago which is more than anyone else at work has. Sadly most of the clients on our network are running on Window 98. I don't think I would go to work if I only had Windows 98 there. It works sufficiently for the needs of most of our users but not for me. One the bright side I don't have to run about the office executing updates on those computers anymore. I'm going to get a flat panel monitor and so I can rearrange my desk and where I put my phone. This might be almost as great as getting a raise.
My Rubic's cube I still leave unfinished but I am getting other things done. I still have more things to do though that I never seem to get to. I do have some more miles on my bike and I have finally hit a golf ball this year. My golf clubs sat still in my garage until late in August. Earlier in the spring I never would have imagined that happening the way it did. One thing I haven't yet gotten at yet is filling up my aquarium which I bought a long while ago now along with some of the filtration equipment and sea salt etc. I think where I left off was contemplating the rock and gravel colors and picking out some fish that would get along with each other. I took that photo below so long ago now it still shows my old dining room table and chairs in it and my 7 foot ficus I bought at Stein's isn't in the corner there yet.
Thursday, August 24, 2006
I was wrong
Saturday, August 19, 2006
2006 miles
I made a chart with my cumulative mileage for last year and this year. This year looks pretty pathetic compared with last year. I'm sure I'll never match last years total mileage. I'm not even going to try. The bottom of the chart is the number of days starting with 1 on June 1. It ends with 138 which was October 16th and the last day I rode my bike in 2005. Today is the 80th day since the first of June so obviously the chart ends there for 2006. Next year I'm definitely planning to beat 2005. I'm going to shoot for 850-900 miles. I think I'm going to get a new bike before that too so I'm not sure it will be a completely fair comparison. I'm going to get something a bit lighter.
Friday, August 18, 2006
Vortex
Friday, August 04, 2006
Caterpillars....lots of them.
This reminds me of a movie that was on TV when I was a kid. Except in the movie I'm remembering it was tarantulas and not caterpillars like this.
I just looked it up on the IMDB and I think it must be "Kingdom of the Spiders" I'm thinking of. I don't remember William Shatner being in it but he was. I wouldn't have known who he was when I was 5 but I'm sure that would have been before TJ Hooker.
Wednesday, August 02, 2006
I copied a DVD
Saturday, July 29, 2006
Stayin' Cool
I found out my DVD player won't play any DVD's I burn....or I should say at least none so far. I'm assuming my player is too old. I probably should have figured on this but I didn't. I got a top of the line Sony DVD player in 1999. I paid like $800 for it. This was back when they had greater numbers of VHS tapes at Blockbuster than DVDs for rent. I remember they'd have 2 or 3 copies of a new release on DVD and you could walk in and get one of them even if it was on a Friday or Saturday. Anyway I figured I'd be OK compatability-wise with my DVD player but so far I haven't been.
Instead of using my Sony DVD player, I figured out I can play my burned DVDs using my Playstation 2. It took a little time figuring out how to connect it to my receiver and get the digital surround sound working but only because I don't normally hook it up that way.
I watched DVD number 1 of 3 of a Led Zeppelin show from Earl's Court in London 1975. I downloaded this set of DVDs from Boot City a while back and now I was finally able to watch some of it. As I watched it I thought about how amazing it was that I had this show to watch in my own living room and about how far technology has come that people can do this. It didn't take much effort on my part.